Gregorio Luperon

Gregorio Luperon (8 September 1839-21 May 1897) was President of the Dominican Republic from 6 December 1879 to 1 September 1880, succeeding Cesareo Guillermo and preceding Fernando Arturo de Merino. He was a member of the liberal Blue Party.

Biography
Gregorio Luperon was born in Port-de-Plate, Haiti (now Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic) on 8 September 1839 to a mulatto family, and, while working for a French timber businessman, he was encouraged to enrich his intellect by reading from his boss' library. In 1861, when his homeland was annexed by Spain, the young and nationalistic Luperon fled to the United States, and, at the start of the Dominican Restoration War in 1863, he amassed an army of 6,000 Dominican insurgents. In early 1865, he briefly served as Vice President, and he was exiled from the country for his opposition to the return of the former President Buenaventura Baez. In 1866, he joined a triumvirate which was formed after Baez's death, but it was dissolved that same year as Jose Maria Cabral assumed the presidency. In 1868, the government was once again overthrown, and Luperon was again forced to flee from the country. He attempted to gain US and Latin American support for Baez's overthrow, and he returned to his homeland in 1873 after Baez's overthrow. After the overthrow of Cesareo Guillermo's government in 1879, Luperon assumed the presidency, serving until his supported candidate Fernando Arturo de Merino assumed the presidency a year later. In 1887, he headed abroad to drum up support for the overthrow of the despotic Ulises Heureaux, but his efforts failed, and he died at his hometown of Puerto Plata in 1897 at the age of 57 after returning to his country from Saint Thomas to die.